Blame it on NPK

It’s Nightprowlkitty’s fault.  For years I have been repressing my second love.  My first love is books and reading: that, I can do anywhere.  But my second love is my adopted city: New York.  

Sublimated, and how, as I live in this stupid cow town in stupid PA where the (Dem) governor is selling the f*cking turnpike.  Where people are more likely to vote their religion than their conscience (if they even have a conscience–they all claim to be Xtian but seem to have no clue about what Christ–assuming he may have existed–taught in that book they keep lauding); anyway, I had managed to repress my love of NYC until this evening.  When NPK posted a YouTube of “42nd Street” and I watched it.

Consider this my tribute to the second greatest love of my life.

Ha!  My intro to the city, in 1983, was walking into an unfamiliar bar, shortly after moving there, and somebody had played that Sinatra tune on the jukebox…and the whole bar started singing along.  That was when I knew I was truly in the city.

Twenty years in the city…fifteen of them in Hell’s Kitchen, which borders the Theater District…

Did I mention that my apartment was only a few block south of Damon Runyan Way?

Okay…the show is called “Chicago” and the clips are from the movie…but I still regret that I missed this on Broadway.  (damn, damn, damn)  So YouTube is the best I can do:

I did get to see the inestimable Cherry Jones on Broadway…unfortunately, though, it wasn’t in one of her better plays.  She did the best she could with substandard material and less than stellar direction.

For the hest explication of ambitious New Yorkers, it’s almost essential to return to the classics (once upon a time, I was Hildy):

It’s been too many years…can’t afford to return to the city I love…but this is indeed a love song to NYC–and it’s still NPK’s fault, for reminding me of the gaping hole in my heart that can only be filled by the city I love.